Slashdot Mirror
Administration Wants To Scale Back Real ID Law
The Washington Post is running a story on the Obama Administration's attempt to get a scaled-back version of Bush's Real ID program passed and implemented. We've been discussing the Real ID program from its earliest days up through the states' resistance to its "unfunded mandate." "Yielding to a rebellion by states that refused to pay for it, the Obama administration is moving to scale back a federal law passed after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that was designed to tighten security requirements for driver's licenses... Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano wants to repeal and replace the controversial, $4 billion domestic security initiative known as Real ID... The new proposal, called Pass ID, would be cheaper, less rigorous, and partly funded by federal grants, according to draft legislation that Napolitano's Senate allies plan to introduce as early as tomorrow. ...the Bush administration struggled to implement the 2005 [Real ID] law, delaying the program repeatedly as states called it an unfunded mandate and privacy advocates warned it would create a de facto national ID."
We go right back to where we were on Sept. 10, 2001. Maybe governors should have been in the Capitol when we knew a plane was on its way to Washington wanting to kill a few thousand more people.
You hear that? The lawmakers that take us to war were actually in danger of physical harm themselves! Imagine that! But their voice, urgency and argument are getting pretty pathetic now that it's been eight years and no such thing has reoccurred. The fear card isn't so strong these days. "You might lose your house and/or job" seems to worry people more than "the odds are 1:10,000,000 that a terrorist may kill you in an extremely contrived scenario!"
Remember any sort of compromise or rational thought is bad because Sensenbrenner says doing so instantly brings us back to pre-9/11 danger. Beware of this sort of mentality. Beware the men that play with your emotions and speak in absolutes for the world is shades of grey.
My work here is dung.
The fundamental issue to having reliable, un-forged ID cards has nothing to do with federal standards. Instead it has everything to do with the drinking age. As long as the legal drinking/smoking ages are higher than the age at which an individual can figure out who to make/get a fake ID, there will be no security provided by an ID card. This is why having a passport actually makes sense. no one goes to the bar on their passport (foreign exchange students aside.) So, a good fake DL can be obtained for $100 near almost any college campus... but a good fake Passport? I'm not sure I'd even know where to begin asking for one, since I'm not a spook. This is of course predicated on the idea that you even believe having a reliable ID card system is a 'good' thing... That is a point that basically can't be argued, either you're for or against it based on a ideological differences. But until the policy makers acknowledge the issue of technical standards being circumvented by clever 15 - 19 year olds every year as technology improves, no standard that they propose will have the effects they think they want.
law passed after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that was designed to tighten security requirements for driver's licenses...
The last eight years free of collapsing buildings seem to me a great indicator of its implicit uselessness. So why push it still?
I just went into the DMV to renew my license and it was expensive and rigorous.
I went last month - it cost $24 to renew my license. I had to wait around 20 minutes before it was my turn, and getting my identification in order was a snap since I already had a Passport..
Hardly expensive or rigorous.
Interesting. Mine was done two weeks ago through an online form that didn't require me leaving my chair and used only the minimum amount of personally identifying information.
Interested in open source engine management for your Subaru?
The real problem with ID issuance in the United States is everything -- everything, including a passport -- goes back to a birth certificate, and not all difficult to obtain a phony birth certificate. I'm not sure this problem really has a short term solution.
Why not just tattoo a number on people. Hear it worked real well about 60 years ago.
I'd be curious are people here more apprehensive about the intrusive government or terrorists?
When can I have my America back?
Hope is the currency of fools
On the one hand, I object to requiring a driver's license for any travel other than driving. General travel documents are one of the hallmarks of a police state.
On the other hand, I have no great objection to requiring the states to standardize the physical driver's license card so that law enforcement doesn't need to know about the designs of fifty plus different licenses.
To the extent that Pass ID does the latter, I'm in favor.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
A National ID would not have stopped the American terrorist who recently murdered the Holocaust Museum guard nor the American terrorist who murdered that doctor who performed abortions.
Alcohol consumption and the driver's license relationship is odd when it comes to punishment for underage consumption. Many states will try to revoke a driver's license for underage consumption even if there was no related driving offense.
Many alcohol and drug laws go too far to stop big offenses by making minor offenses into a big ones as well. For example, in my state, testing positive in a drug test is the same as possession and results in more jail time compared to other states. And don't get me started on the 21 drinking age and the federal blackmail with highway funds.
I Cater to the Needs of Stupid People. - from a coffee mug Christmas gift
A hospitol birth certificate isn't hard to obtain, but an authorized state certificate, which keep in mind is also back-ended and validated by information maintained by the SSA and serveral other databases, is nearly impossible to obtain.
My wife lost hers and we needed it to go on our honeymoon to get a passport. It was a nasty process as they wanted to validate things like the name of the hospital she was born in just to get a COPY of her birth certificate. When I went to get a replacement SS card a couple of years ago and I brough my original certificate, it wasn't a current certified state version, and they made a dozen phone calls to validate my certificate was in fact valid, and then suggested in the future I might want to get an updated certified copy and keep the original for posterity...
Making a fake is not hard at all, but as soon as they might try to enter that information in their system, if the record in the computer can't be found or is inaccurate, you have to go through an appeals process and several ID validations before they'll issue a licences. They do NOT take for granted what's on the piece of paper you hand them. This isn't the 70's.
Geting a valid ID created using phony information is very hard... VERY hard. Not to mention the mathing SS card, valid SS record, validated proof of address from utility companies, proof of insurance in that fake name, vehicle registration, and more....
There is no contest in life for which the unprepared have the advantage.
Why does there have to be a solution?
More efficient commerce isn't an acceptable answer.
A free people don't have to verify themselves to their government and the government has no intrinsic right to demand that of a person.
"it doesn't make our government track our every move or anything."
And you know that how?
Because in my country at least getting government departments to tell us what they do and don't talk to each other about and what info they are and aren't mining about the citizens is like pulling teeth and requires costly court battles.
I assume you just implicitly trust your public servants to do the moral thing in the course of their duties?
I've worked in our federal government, if the data is there and there isn't a specific law banning the use of it, at best there's a pilot project or little dodgey in house app to play with the data a million different ways. I know this because I wrote one and though it was pretty benign to start with, the potential that it created and the hunger for information on everyone displayed by the various deparments I worked with I'm sure it's not benign (or even legal) anymore.
The thing is, who's going to stop them from doing things like that? You?
My license had been expired for six months. Renewal, pay a late fee and they hand it over. Easy. It's funny but on that day I heard on the radio some
Republican senator saying: "If we have national health insurance, we will have healthcare like the DMV."
Now I'm a right wing kind of guy, but I couldn't help but immediately think:
"I wish my health care was as good as my DMV". I would say Republicans should shy away from DMV arguments, because right now health care is so screwed up that
making it like the DMV would be an improvement. Imagine an emergency room where they had different lines for different ailments, actually gave out numbers like the DMV does, had friendly people and a nice building... and only cost $50.
This is my sig.
New Hampshire has already passed into law that any federal identification program is unconstitutional with 2007 HB0685. To quote the bill, which was signed into law;
The general court finds that the public policy established by Congress in the Real ID Act of 2005, Public Law 109-13, is contrary and repugnant to Articles 1 through 10 of the New Hampshire constitution as well as Amendments 4 though 10 of the Constitution for the United States of America. Therefore, the state of New Hampshire shall not participate in any driver's license program pursuant to the Real ID Act of 2005 or in any national identification card system that may follow therefrom.